We present analytical solutions to three qubits and a single-mode cavity coupling system beyond the rotating-wave approximation (RWA). The zeroth-order approximation, equivalent to the adiabatic approximation, works well for arbitrary coupling strength for small qubit frequency. The first-order approximation, called the generalized rotating-wave approximation (GRWA), produces an effective solvable Hamiltonian with the same form as the ordinary RWA one and exhibits substantial improvements of energy levels over the RWA even on resonance. Based on these analytical eigensolutions, we study both the bipartite entanglement and genuine multipartite entanglement (GME). The dynamics of these two kinds of entanglements using the GRWA are consistent with the numerical exact ones. Interestingly, the well-known sudden death of entanglement occurs in the bipartite entanglement dynamics but not in the GME dynamics.

• Received 13 January 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.94.012317